Help

Welcome to the Vital Access Portal. Here’s how to get started finding documents, images, video, and other objects in the repository.

Basic Keyword Search

To do a simple keyword search of the repository,

Type your search term(s) in the blank text box, and then click the Search button.

Hints

You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT when searching for multiple terms. (Note that Boolean operators must be typed in all capital letters.)

If you type more than one search term without specifying a Boolean operator, the system assumes there is an OR between the terms and will find objects that have at least one of your terms in indexed fields.

You can search using a phrase, which must be in quotation marks, for example, "road warriors."

You can use wildcards in your search. A question mark (?) represents a single wildcard character, and an asterisk (*) represents one or more wildcard characters.

Search results are displayed in order of relevance on the List of Titles page. Search results are weighted more heavily if your search term matches a term found in an object's Title or Creator field.

Other Searches You Can do

To see a table of ALL the objects in the repository sorted by created date,

Click the Show All link.

To see the titles only of ALL the objects in the repository sorted alphabetically,

Click the Browse links in the menu bar. You can choose to browse by other indexes such as creator, subject, and collections.

To do a precise keyword search using multiple terms and filters such as date range,

Click the Advanced Search link in the menu bar.

To do a keyword search of parent collections in the repository,

Click the Advanced Search link in the menu bar.

On the resulting Advanced Search screen, use the Search Collections option.